Harold Cazneaux was an Australian pictorialist photographer; a pioneer whose style had an indelible impact on the development of Australian photographic history. In 1916, he was a founder of the Pictorialist Sydney Camera Circle. As a regular participator in national and international exhibitions, Cazneaux was unfaltering in his desire to contribute to the discussion about the photography of his times. He created some of the most memorable images of the early twentieth century. For many years, Cazneaux’s prints were exhibited in solo shows in the windows of the Kodak Salon, Sydney, as well as international shows organised by the London Salon of Photography (1911 to 1952), and later included in the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain’s annual salons. In 1914 he won Kodak’s “Happy Moment” competition, and the £100 prize money went to a deposit for his future home.

He was a founder of the Pictorialist Sydney Camera Circle whose “manifesto” was drawn up and signed on 28 November 1916 by a group of six photographers: Cecil Bostock, James Stening, W. S. White, Malcolm McKinnon and James Paton, later joined by Henri Mallard. They pledged “to work and to advance pictorial photography and to show our own Australia in terms of sunlight rather than those of greyness and dismal shadows”.